Wednesday, January 31, 2007
by Goya. Saturn eating one of his children. Saturn was the Roman name for Chronos.
Homeric Hymns (1)
A basic history of the lineage of the ruling Greek gods.
Uranos, the grandfather of Zeus, gave birth to Chronos, Zeus' dad. In a patriarchal society, power is passed from father to son but not always voluntarily. Uranos devised the solution of shoving his children back into their mother. This ultimatly didn't work. Chronos used a scythe to castrate his dad and the castrated parts fell into the ocean from which came the goddess Aphrodite. Chronos tried to maintain his power by eating his sons(picture to the left by Goya) but was tricked by his wife into eating a rock instead, thus sparing Zeus. When Zeus was strong enough, he overcame his father and used the oracle(Prometheus) to prevent ever creating a son powerful enough to overcome him. Both Apollo and Hermes, sons of Zeus, knew they would be subordinate to their father or face their own deaths.
The Homeric Hymns we are responsible for are Dionysus, Hermes and Demeter. More on them soon.
Vocab
- Epiphany, lightbulb thoughts/moments
- Eurika, "I found it!" exclamation. Often atributed to archimedes who I will blog about soon.
- Anamnesis, recollection
- Theogony, the origions of the gods
- Theophany, revelations of the gods
- Homogeny, turning everything into one way(think homogenized milk)
- In Illo Tempore - Latin, "at that time"(take a Latin test!)
